I’ve met Jolien & Matthijs about a year ago. They were well in advance to discuss their wedding day coming up july 23th. Luckily non of them sparkles I saw in their eyes back then had disappeared. The location they suggested for their engagement shoot (I should really find a proper name for that, but all the good ones are taken, thanks colleagues!) was the left bank of the river ‘Schelde’ in Antwerp as it was the location with lots of good memories going back to the early days of their ‘get-together-period’.

The equipment I used was about the same as always, a combination of sunbounce reflectors, diffuser screens or TTL flash speedlights. Al this equipment carried and adjusted properly by the amazing Julie 😉

Not many people might know Drew, but for me he became like a true source of inspiration by looking at just 1 picture of him; the Waterbuffalo

Attending a workshop from Drew is very inspiring & exhausting at the same time. He simply can’t stop speaking, he ’s like the Energizer Bunny of photography! It’s always good to have a teacher that has something to tell rather than repeat the same shit over & over again.

The first day we started of with some discussions about his Forest Fashion shoots. He showed as all the preparation & hard work that came with it. And of course, very important, he gave a thourough insight on the lighting part.

In the afternoon we had to go out in the garden, look for a nice spot, team up in small groups and ‘just do it’ . Each group had 1 Elinchrom Ranger & about 1,5 hr to it’s disposal. The goal was to get a first practice & feel with the rangers outside. Key elements where to adjust ambient & flashlight to something that fitted together. Although I ‘ve done it before, given the fact that there was a time restriction, other group members who wanted to shoot and a well known photographer as Drew who was going to judge what you did, made me struggle a lot. So I went to ‘Safe Mode’. Lucky enough, we had Christina Coene in our group who did a brilliant job:

After this, we regathered and discussed our try outs with Drew. I ‘ve seen many good photo’s, but yes, we all played on safe as Bert also pointed out.
Drew did send us home with an assignment: show up the next morning 08:00hrs sharp with a concept for a forest shoot.

That next day -though it wasn’t 08hr sharp 😉 – we splitted up in 2 main groups to discuss our concepts. Actually we had too many and it was a bit of a struggle to satisfy everyone. You know us egotrippin’ photographers hé 😉 But it went rather smoothly and what did came out was so véry ‘not on safe’ that I had doubts whether we could pull it off or not. We were going for a real group oriented concept where each photograher helped out to make a few but ‘epic’ pics. The set up was véry -but expected- chaotic with everyone running around like chicken 😀 But thanks to the natural leadership of Filip Bunkens, it all worked out fine. Time for results now. Bear in mind that it’s not my set of pictures, but the result of a cooperation. I will give all the names later on since I don’t know all of their sites (most where foreign). My Belgian colleagues were Filip Bunkens & Kris Van de Vijver.

Storyboard: girl searches for lost dog (the picture with the dog loose & running didn’t work out), UFO beam hits her & she ’s levitated by it.
Technically: in photo 1 a medium softbox about 4 meters high behind the trees, a speedlight as search light and a medium softbox as key light.
In photo 2 & 3 a ranger on a boom, 2 rangers far behind the model as a rimlight and a ranger towards the background right behind the model.
A fill in for the dark parts on the face would have been better, certainly for pic nr 3. I will make another blogpost on how we actually made nr 3, cause that’s rather hilarious. But therefor I need some footage from the one who filmed it.

I would like to thank Bert & Drew for the major opportunity. It ’s turned out a real trigger for me to go and explore some more. Also -of course- big thumbs up for my colleagues & models on this shoot.

That was the downside of an otherwise pleasant engagement shoot begin june with Virginie & Tim. I didn’t harvest all this critter heritage myself, my lovely assistant Julie took the biggest part of it as she was in short skirt the day as billions of new mosquitos hatched in the forests around Oelegem. But we did’nt surrender ourselves, all for the love of good images to satisfy the lovely couple which must have been bitten also many times. But they didn’t loose their spirit and neither did we. Enjoy!

First of all I wish y’ all a happy 2010 where everyone of ya may find the spirit and the motivation to pursue your goals and, oh well, a winning lottery ticket of course 😀

For myself, 2009 was a year I will not forget. On a professional level at Siemens, I particularly enjoyed working with our French & German colleagues at Tihange & Doel, and I learned a lot about turbines in general. I’ve met people at these projects who will be friends for a long time.

As on a personal level, I came to terms with the nasty feeling I got 2 years ago crossing the 40-year boundary. It’s still there, but I can manage it, not envying everyone who ’s younger anymore 😉 But it’s still weird when your nephew comes over with his girlfriend, introducing me as ‘Uncle Jef’ 😀

As far as my whereabouts as wedding photographer, I will be taking things more slowly like I stated in the previous post, enabling myself to gain quality, to learn and improve my skills and workflow. I need to take the latter down to 50% of the actual cycle time, but I’m sure I will succeed at least in thát part. Furthermore I need to develop my own style, brand & logo. And a new website as the cherry on the cake!

2009 was also the year I discovered Twitter. I already heard about it in 2008 and I was 100% convinced I would never take part in this crazy “What am I doing” stuff. I thought it was for nerds with too much time. And look at me now, twittering as if it’s a natural thing to do, already hooked on it 😉 But of course, the twittering itself is not as important as the whole network of friends, acquaintances and colleagues involved with it. It’s sort of a direct communication without having the obligation to respond like chatting -wich I don’t like- but far more quicker than normal email traffic. My kids for instance hardly use email these days.

And what about blogging? Well, as you’ve might noticed, it wasn’t top priority in 2009. But if I look around me, I’m not alone. I’ve seen a major decline in frequency at almost every blog that is photography related. Of course there are exceptions, luckily, and some new ones even post interesting pics on a daily base. But again, it’s a less is more thingy because nontheless, some of us produced extreme powerfull images (the list is too long to sum them up) and kicked the benchmark -again, sigh- up a notch. My favourite item however this year was Bert’s 50/50 project which contained a set of memorable images. I don’t mind if blog fequencies lower, as long as the images keep surprising me, it’s ok 😉

Speaking of images, here’s the set of my last 2009 wedding. Sofie & Gert had to be patient cause they only received there pics last weekend while the wedding was 31/10/09. That’s the downside of being a part-time photographer I guess, but certainly my turtle-slow workflow is the major factor. But hey, they left the house with a big big smile on their faces anyway 😀

I didn’t add the images of townhall & church on purpose. It would have made this blogpost way too long. I will try to upload the slideshow I’ve made, so you can see them in there.

A big big thanks to Patrick who was a great assistant, thinking ahead of me and pointing out the different possibilities of some shots. And of course to Sofie and Gert for being the perfect bride and groom. Cheers!